Abstract [en]

This chapter investigates and compares the concepts of folkhälsa and folkehelse (literally, ‘people’s health’ in Swedish and Norwegian, respectively) in the works of two highly influential twentieth-century medical actors in Sweden and Norway, Axel Höjer and Karl Evang. Both were key actors in the construction of the welfare states in their respective countries. Both served as Chief Medical Officer: Höjer held this position in Sweden from 1935 to 1952, while Evang held it in Norway from 1938 to 1972. They were also both involved in international health work: At the end of the Second World War, Evang was one of the initiators behind the World Health Organization (WHO), and in the late 1940s and 1950s both he and Höjer were prominent actors in that organisation, where they also cooperated strategically on certain issues. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Höjer also worked with health issues in the field in India and Africa, mainly for the WHO.

How did these two actors use and understand the concepts of folkhälsa and folkehelse in their publications? What were the historical roots of the concepts, and how did they evolve over time? How were they understood in relation to different national and international contexts? And how, if at all, did the Swedish and Norwegian conceptions of ‘people’s health’ differ from each other?

Both Höjer and Evang published extensively, and we have also been able to build on unpublished source material from their comprehensive personal archives.